Saturday, April 18, 2015

On April 9, 2013, Laura Barns (Heather
Sossaman) drank too much at a high school classmate’s unsupervised keg party, and
promptly passed out and pooped on herself. Time was when such immature behavior
might be forgiven as a youthful indiscretion and quietly swept under the rug just
as soon as the hangover wore off the next morning.

But then came the unforgiving Digital
Age during which the slightest faux pas can so easily come back to haunt you forever.
That’s precisely what happened to Laura, thanks to the mean-spirited fellow
reveler who, instead of coming to the assistance of a damsel-in-distress, whipped
out a cell to record an embarrassing video of her sprawled on the ground with
her skirt hiked above the waist.

The initial invasion of privacy escalated to cyber-bulling when
the movie was posted online followed by a thread of cruel comments. After
several days of mercilessly teasing, the tortured teen finally took her own
life with a gun.

Now, it’s exactly one year later, and we find Laura’s former BBF Blaire
(Shelley Hennig) flirting with Mitch (Moses Jacob Storm) via
Skype. Their sensual exchange comes to an abrupt end when they are joined in
the chatroom by a trio of friends, Jess (Renee Olstead) Adam (Will Peltz) and Ken
(Jacob Wysocki).

Next thing you know, an
anonymous intruder claiming to be Laura announces her presence and starts divulging deep secrets about each of them.
The spooked quintet assumes the uninvited guest to be their prankster pal, Val (Courtney
Halverson), until she pops up on a separate screen. Then, when “Laura” starts knocking them off
one-by-one, it becomes clear that they are dealing with a disembodied spirit
bent on vengeance.

Directed by Levan Gabriadze, Unfriended is a found footage horror
flick ostensibly designed with Millennials in mind. For, this novel genre-bender
unfolds on a computer from beginning to its terrifying end. Although most folks
over 30 are apt to find the hyperactive adventure visually-disconcerting, the up-and-coming
generation weaned on screens is likely to be right at home, given how they're
glued to electronic stimuli, 24/7.

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KamWilliams.com

The Sly Fox Film Reviews publishes the content of film critic Kam Williams. Voted Most Outstanding Journalist of the Decade by the Disilgold Soul Literary Review in 2008, Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who writes for 100+ publications around the U.S., Europe, Asia, Africa, Canada and the Caribbean. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Online, the NAACP Image Awards Nominating Committee and Rotten Tomatoes.

In addition to a BA in Black Studies from Cornell, he has an MA in English from Brown, an MBA from The Wharton School, and a JD from Boston University. Kam lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife and son.